071 Competitive Strategy

11/12/2014

"On Monday, President Barack Obama urged the Federal Communications Commission to saddle Internet service providers (ISPs) with many of the same burdensome regulations that telephone companies have to comply with. Why would the president seek to regulate a network that seems to be working efficiently without the government? The answer, unsurprisingly, is cronyism.

For years, Internet giants like Facebook, Google, and Netflix have been pushing for network neutrality to avoid paying for the traffic their users hog from ISPs. As it currently stands, Netflix and YouTube account for half of all peak-hour download traffic in the United States, often leading to slow buffering speeds during prime hours. As a result, some ISPs have sought to provide better service to their customers by suggesting that the Netflix and YouTubes of the world pay slightly more for their users to stream videos faster — a pretty clear-cut win for customers if ever there was one."

11/11/2014

"Although it appears to be spreading through a third-party OS X app store in China and consequently largely confined to that country, the development could be a taste of things to come for iDevice owners in other parts of the world if similarly designed malware is launched by other cybercriminals, or even the same group"

11/05/2014

"Voting is important—to politicians, because it gives them a sense of validation. Good-government types like the whole balloting ritual, too, because they get warm fuzzies from seeing others invest time and energy into the institution that defines so much of their sense of self-worth. That's why you'll be endlessly nagged—and even receive implied threats—to punch your card, fill in the oval, or tap the screen for the candidate who disgusts you least. But in terms of influencing government officials, grimly performing what others insist is a duty every couple of years and then (with good reason) bitching about the outcome isn't the last word in civic participation."

(Via.) Reason.comHow to Make Life Inconvenient for Politicians Not Just on Election Day — But Every Day

11/04/2014

"A 2010 Pentagon directive on military support to civilian authorities details what critics say is a troubling policy that envisions the Obama administration’s potential use of military force against Americans.

The directive contains noncontroversial provisions on support to civilian fire and emergency services, special events and the domestic use of the Army Corps of Engineers.

The troubling aspect of the directive outlines presidential authority for the use of military arms and forces, including unarmed drones, in operations against domestic unrest."

(Via.) Washington TimesInside the Ring: Directive outlines Obama's plan to use the military against citizens

"I've been called crazy countless times in my life. I was called crazy when I quit school in my teens in order to go out into the world to gain true knowledge and experience. I was called crazy when I quit my 'secure' job at a bank and started an internet company in 1994 (which went on to be worth $240 million at its peak). I was (and still am) called crazy when I began to state forcibly in 2009 that we are nearing the very end of this monetary and financial system.

And I was (and still am) called crazy for thinking bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have the potential to change everything."

(Via.) The Dollar Vigilante Think You Missed the Bitcoin Boat? You Didn't. It Hasn't Even Started Yet.

11/02/2014

"Tor, after all, doesn’t just let users hide their identities from the sites they visit, anonymously buying drugs on the Silk Road or uploading leaked documents to news sites through the leak platform SecureDrop. It’s also designed to circumvent censorship and surveillance that occurs much closer to the user’s own connection, such as in repressive regimes like Iran or China. And since Facebook uses SSL encryption, no surveillance system watching either Facebook’s connection or the user’s local traffic should be able to match up a user’s identity with their Facebook activity."

10/20/2014

Could an Irish man selling products globally using Bitcoin as the accepted currency be the next Amazon? Karl Edwards sells everything from e-cigaretes to barbecues and a whole lot more at his site buybybitcoin.com (as in buy by bitcoin), an easy little jingle to remember.

I wonder how this will compete with Amazon? Or will Amazon get ahead of the power curve by becoming early adapters and start accepting Bitcoins themselves?

The older (November 2013) CNN article entitled 8 things you can buy with Bitcoin right now says that, "Most of (Karl’s) business is still in government-sponsored dollars, though. He's not investing heavily in Bitcoin, as he still sees the currency as an experiment. 'At this stage, it's play money,’" Karl supposedly said.

Having just visited the website, it looks rather robust after less than a year… At least for a man who is just "dabbling in” crypto currency, there looks to be some proof of work here - he even has a verified by PayPal logo on his site. But that doesn’t mean much… does anyone have any experience with them yet? If so, leave your comments below.

On the other hand, OpenBazaar may be more decentralized and viable option, until larger organizations like Amazon, Paypal, etc., start accepting this form of payment - hopefully before they find themselves out of a rapidly growing community of people who trust cyber currency much more the current system.

Is this far fetched speculation? Perhaps, but who would have thought that Apple would have the courage to take a step back and protect their customers from “big brother”? How long will it last? Just as long as there are consumers who buy it and prove that they want their privacy.

Who knows what kind of jobs such diversity in the marketplace could open up amongst the local community? One would suppose (with just a cursory overhead pass), everything from local delivery of hemp (now legal in Tennessee) bracelets/clothing to a Wireless Gaming Chairs ($249.95), to local delivery of private underground lemonade manufacturers that cops seem to be so darned sure is best regulated… for your own good of course.

“Five-0 allows citizens to record and store data from every encounter with law enforcement. Find out how people in your community rate your local law enforcement. Submit your reviews and share them with family, neighbors, media and the international community. Rate and review law enforcement and create a safer community for all!"

Apple users can sign up to be on the notification list for the iOS version.

10/15/2014

"In an effort to protect the private communications of iPhone and iPad users, Apple said on Wednesday its latest mobile operating system, the iOS8, has built-in encryption features that does not allow anybody – even police with search warrants – from accessing data stored on handheld devices.

News of the updated features was unveiled together with a statement to customers, some of whom expressed concern after it was revealed that Apple in the past complied with legally-binding police requests to unlock customer devices.

‘Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your pass code and therefore cannot access this data,’ Apple said on its website. ‘So it’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8.’

The statement then attempted to shine some light on national security requests made by the government.

‘A tiny percentage of our millions of accounts is affected by national security-related requests. In the first six months of 2014, we received 250 or fewer of these requests. Though we would like to be more specific, by law this is the most precise information we are currently allowed to disclose.’"

“...the video takes for granted that it is a good thing if an American gets a job at the expense of a foreigner. After all, the whole point of urging viewers to spend more money on American products is that this will cause ‘insourcing.’ Firms will lay off foreign workers and bring those jobs back home to the United States. But other things equal, why should we hold this ethical view? The question is even harder to answer once we consider that the foreign workers who, according to the video producers, will lose their jobs are probably extremely poor compared to the Americans who will get the jobs. Since when is it a noble thing to put a desperately poor person out of work?

This obvious (but unstated) national prejudice of the video provoked the following unintentionally ironic statement in the comments at YouTube: ‘I am Canadian but I always try to buy north american [sic] made when possible.’ I wonder if this Canadian actually means all of North America, including Mexico? Or does he just mean Canada and the United States? If he feels kinship with the members of his continent, what about the entire Western Hemisphere? Should he ‘buy Western’ to keep jobs for his buddies in Brazil, rather than shipping them to those parasites in Thailand? Going the other way, should Americans also try to increase their purchases of items made in state by 5 percent, so that Texans keep jobs in Texas, while Floridians keep jobs in Florida? Of course I'm kidding; I am trying to show the arbitrariness of adjusting one’s spending to ‘create jobs at home.’"

10/12/2014

"I know something about this. A generation ago, much of Latin America was in turmoil. By 1990, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization called Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, had seized control of most of my home country, Peru, where I served as the president’s principal adviser. Fashionable opinion held that the people rebelling were the impoverished or underemployed wage slaves of Latin America, that capitalism couldn’t work outside the West and that Latin cultures didn’t really understand market economics.

The conventional wisdom proved to be wrong, however. Reforms in Peru gave indigenous entrepreneurs and farmers control over their assets and a new, more accessible legal framework in which to run businesses, make contracts and borrow—spurring an unprecedented rise in living standards. "

10/09/2014

“If the government relinquished its role in handling contagious diseases, the public would be far safer.

First and most obvious: the government restricts freedom of association, and more specifically, the freedom of property owners to exclude whomever they desire. In the current legal environment, it would be pointless for airlines, bus carriers, amusement parks, hotels, etc. to maintain their own list(s) of people with contagious diseases. If these people weren't considered health risks by the government, then they could sue if (say) Disneyworld refused to let them into the park.

But suppose the government did act as if owners really had the right to control who used their property. What voluntary institutions would spring up to help a free society cope with the problem of contagious diseases? 'If the government relinquished its role in handling contagious diseases, the public would be far safer.'

10/08/2014

"Someday we’ll look back on politics and shake our heads. It will have been a necessary phase—but not one we’ll want to relive. Necessary, because we have been undergoing a series of phases, none of which we could have bypassed.

We have already entered the next phase. Call it the Age of Connection. Once we realize all the benefits of this next phase, we’ll see how wasteful and acrimonious the prior phase had been."

10/07/2014

"If compliance isn’t quite your cup of tea—and we’d be far better off as a nation if we were far less compliant—then you’ve got a few more options ranging from legal-but-sure-to-annoy-an-officer to legal-but-it-could-get-you-arrested to legal-but-it-could-get-you-shot.

If this is war—and a good case could be made for the fact that the government is indeed waging a war on the American citizenry—then the tactics I’m about to outline could be considered nonviolent guerilla warfare, using whatever strategic, legal, creative and nonviolent means are available in order to outmaneuver an opponent—in our case, the American police force—whose language is the language of force."

Once again a private group proves that volunteer cooperation is superior to extortion. In this case Firestone (the tire manufacturer) is doing what governments can’t do by extortion and the credible threat of violence. Firestone has stopped ebola in it’s tracks.

"Dr. Brendan Flannery, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's team in Liberia, has hailed Firestone's efforts as resourceful, innovative and effective.

Currently the only Ebola cases on the sprawling, 185-square-mile plantation are in patients who come from neighboring towns.

Long rows of dappled rubber trees cover Harbel's landscape. Prevailing winds cause the adult trees to lean westward. Back when Firestone was still based in Ohio, employees used to joke that the trees are 'bowing to Akron.'

When the Ebola case was diagnosed, 'we went in to crisis mode,' recalls Ed Garcia, the managing director of Firestone Liberia. He redirected his entire management structure toward Ebola. Levi Zeopueger, 40, was treated at Firestone's Ebola clinic and survived. But he lost 11 other members of his family to the virus. i

Levi Zeopueger, 40, was treated at Firestone's Ebola clinic and survived. But he lost 11 other members of his family to the virus. John W. Poole/NPR

Garcia's team first tried to find a hospital in the capital to care for the woman. 'Unfortunately, at that time, there was no facility that could accommodate her,' he says. 'So we quickly realized that we had to handle the situation ourselves.'

The case was detected on a Sunday. Garcia and a medical team from the company hospital spent Monday setting up an Ebola ward. Tuesday the woman was placed in isolation.

'None of us had any Ebola experience,' he says. They scoured the Internet for information about how to treat Ebola. They cleared out a building on the hospital grounds and set up an isolation ward. They grabbed a bunch of hazmat suits for dealing with chemical spills at the rubber factory and gave them to the hospital staff. The suits worked just as well for Ebola cases."

10/06/2014

"It’s finally happening: the backlash against the most impressive features of digital-age economics. I’ve been waiting for this for years, knowing that we can’t smoothly travel from the old world of command and control to the new world of personal sovereignty without engaging in the intellectual argument.

What’s been missing until recently has been the framework these arguments would take. That’s now becoming clearer. The opponents of markets just can’t reconcile themselves to embracing the very thing they have supposedly advocated for generations: popular empowerment.

The technological upheaval of the last decade has given rise to a wonderful restructuring of some major aspects of economic life. The most impressive fall under the label of the ‘sharing economy’ or the ‘peer-to-peer (P2P) economy.’ They represent an implausible form of egalitarianism, rightly understood: everyone has access to and controls the means of production. It seems like a socialist dream, except that it is being realized through private property, entrepreneurship, and the universalization of the commercial spirit."

09/30/2014

"Which leads me to my second reason for thinking that decentralization is inevitable. Call it ‘the great inversion.’ As Foundation for Economic Education COO Carl Oberg puts it:

'This is a development that turns the very logic of political action on its head.’” - Max Borders, The End of Politics, As humanity decentralizes, our norms will change, too — Part Two September 03, 2014

"Once the bulk of digital natives come to think of today’s politics as obsolete, we’ll be in for some interesting times.

The architecture of the Web has already shown the world what’s possible in terms of upgrading our democratic operating system (DOS). This is true both in the sense that our new social technologies are like our online technologies, and in the sense that our online technologies enable new social technologies to emerge. Little platoons are already emerging on the spine of the blockchain, for example. And just as Lyft and Uber are showing taxi cartels how it’s done (or as Kickstarter is showing the NEA how it’s done, or as Bitcoin is showing the Federal Reserve how it’s done) new parallel governance structures will soon show State hierarchies around the world how it’s done.” - Max Borders, The End of Politics, As humanity decentralizes, our moral norms will change, too - Part Two, September 03, 2014

09/29/2014

"There is no doubt too much war in the world today. The good news, however, is that the human race is entering an unprecedented age of peace, connection, and prosperity. The great fact is that since about 1800, we’ve been growing more and more prosperous. It’s all thanks to an ongoing process of decentralization in which humanity reaps the rewards of innovation, production, and trade. More and more of the world runs on adaptive, lateral relationships instead of command-and-control structures, on open systems rather than closed ones. Nested networks of human flourishing abound, and they are challenging the hierarchies around them. The question that should puzzle us is whether these nested networks exist despite or because of prevailing national hierarchies. Paradoxically, the answer could be ‘both,’ depending on where and when in the world we look."

09/11/2014

"The model seems so obvious now that I’ve seen it in operation. I’ve spent a day and a half with the incoming class of Praxis, a start-up company that is providing an answer to the problem that everyone complains about but few have sought to solve. What I saw was inspiring and wonderful in every way. These are some very lucky participants; each one is special, and they know it, too.

This was a retreat to begin their new adventure in a one-year college-replacement program that combines learning and work. In the time I was there, the students heard from real entrepreneurs about the challenges of start-ups. They received an overview of the rigorous curriculum they will be tackling over the coming year. They prepared speeches on random topics and faced criticism from faculty and students, right there on the spot. They received blunt advice on workplace performance from bosses. They pitched business ideas and faced direct assessment from people who know.

The entire time, my heart was racing. I was on the edge of my seat, feeling like I was watching a new model of education unfold before my eyes. This is invaluable material, a priceless experience in a new kind of classroom. A dream, really: actual preparation for life through adding value to yourself."

09/02/2014

"The web forum 4chan is known mostly as a place to share juvenile and, to put it mildly, politically incorrect images. But it’s also the birthplace of one of the latest attempts to subvert the NSA’s mass surveillance program.

When whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that full extent of the NSA’s activities last year, members of the site’s tech forum started talking about the need for a more secure alternative to Skype. Soon, they’d opened a chat room to discuss the project and created an account on the code hosting and collaboration site GitHub and began uploading code.

Eventually, they settled on the name Tox, and you can already download prototypes of the surprisingly easy-to-use tool. The tool is part of a widespread effort to create secure online communication tools that are controlled not only by any one company, but by the world at large—a continued reaction to the Snowden revelations. This includes everything from instant messaging tools to email services."

"The online bazaar for contraband known as ‘Agora’ now has more product listings than any other online black market, according to a report released last week by the Digital Citizens Alliance, a nonprofit focused on internet safety. The analysis counts 16,137 products for sale on the site, which is protected by the anonymity software Tor and accepts only bitcoin. That’s about 200 more listings than Silk Road 2.0, a reincarnation of the original Silk Road launched earlier this year by several of the same administrators. It’s also several thousand more than were offered on the first Silk Road before its seizure in October of last year."

08/13/2014

"To use the schoolyard analogy yet again, it is a fact of life that the class bully will not leave a victim in peace because he is enthralled with the feeling of power over others. The bully will not stop because he has no incentive. Protesting only encourages him. Using the system as a shield only amuses him. Logic and reason only anger him. Punching the bully in the teeth is the only incentive he will respect. If you show that you can disrupt a tyrant’s abuse of power anytime you wish, if you show that you can hurt him back, only then will he take you seriously."

Dr. Sabrin has a point here, and because he is trying something new - something that promotes liberty and trade, (which we know works), - we believe his idea is worthy of implementing in order to try something different.

Why?

Because as we mention in our Two Tribes article, we recognize that trying the same failed policy over and over is futile and a waste of energy and time. Again, if you do the same thing over and over expecting a different result you are meeting Einsteins very definition of insanity.

12/22/2012

Lisa Jackson's bio at the EPA web site says "Jackson is the first African-American to serve as EPA Administrator. She has made it a priority to focus on vulnerable groups including children, the elderly, and low-income communities that are particularly susceptible to environmental and health threats." To suggest that she is completely ignorant as to the impact her policies have on American business is being charitable.

12/08/2012

I had just come to a stop when they pulled into my driveway directly behind me. Their headlights were set to high beams and I couldn’t see them for the glare in the rearview mirror. Chris was always showing up in a hurry, vehemently telling me to “get ready, we’re going out”. By the time I set the parking brake and turned off the stereo, Chris was not at my side window as I expected, maybe it wasn’t him. As I turned the key off, the headlights from behind dimmed and the glare reduction allowed me to see the passenger pulling a ski mask over his face in my rearview mirror. The driver was already stepping out of the car.

05/07/2012

Second, while both parties participate in tribal warfare, both sides are not equally culpable. The political system faces what the authors call “asymmetric polarization,” with the Republican Party implacably refusing to allow anything that might help the Democrats politically, no matter the cost.

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein in their new book which I will not be reading suggest that obstructionist Republicans are the problem and need to "help" the Democrats. When we have cut the budget 80%, eliminated all entitlements and affirmative action programs, eliminated the IRS and returned to the gold standard THEN but only then will I "consider helping" the Democrats. via www.amazon.com

05/06/2012

“After a frenzied year or so of getting [new] fans, most brands are now taking a much closer look at what they are really trying to achieve and what’s really working.”

Anytime, anybody says that making money is "seconday to blah, blah, blah" - then you get a whole lot of blah, blah, blah and very little money. Which is where Mark Zuckerburg is right now. Anybody investing in the Facebook IPO is an idiot.

03/26/2012

02/21/2012

Mr. Meltzer’s three laws of regulation help in part to explain the crisis. The first is that “lawyers and bureaucrats regulate,” but “markets circumvent regulation.” Second, and related, is that “regulations are static. Markets are dynamic.” Third, “regulation is most effective when it changes the incentives of the regulated.”

02/13/2012

Let’s pretend we have a God’s eye view of a gunfight developing on a city street or a battlefield somewhere. To keep it simple, we will say that there are two people: person A and person B.

Because we have this God’s eye view, we know how this little drama will play out. We know that this gunfight will last exactly 5 seconds from the second the first shot is initiated. We also know that person A is a common street thug, and person B is a good police officer who has all the required training.

Person A (street thug) starts the gunfight, and because he doesn’t know all that much about how to guarantee his hits, he will have to shoot all of his rounds in his magazine. Person A sees his rounds impacting around the officer and he is “walking" his rounds in to his target.

The police officer (Person B) was caught in condition white, so as he burnt his first .25 seconds up by reacting to the thug, and he now has 4.75 seconds to live.

Discover what happens next by accessing the conclusion available in the PulseO2DA Armory.

04/17/2011

“Things are picking up,” said Cody Chase, 24, who had just finished an overtime shift at a coal mine north of here and was having a 7 a.m. burrito and beer at a downtown breakfast joint. Hours at the mine are up, said Mr. Chase, who makes $26 an hour after less than a year on the job, and new workers have started coming on.

02/28/2011

We will be seeing a LOT more of this "sophisticated crime" in America in the near future. Whether it is force on force violence, cyberattacks, financial chicanery or just old-fashioned industrial espionage - over the past 40 years America has created a set of vulnerabilities that our global competitors in Asia, Russia and Eastern Europe stand ready to exploit. And they will do so with an asymmetrical advantage in the rules of engagement.

"FREMONT -- A sophisticated team of 15 robbers armed with rifles and handguns, wearing masks and matching black clothing, tied up five employees of a high-tech manufacturer Sunday morning and stole a "significant amount" of computer components, police said..."

02/07/2011

Corporate profits do not have to be shared by American workers. As long as they are paid the salary they were promised then they are entitled to nothing else - unless the management and shareholders - who's capital is at risk - decide to offer them a share of the profits. Now, most good enterprises have profit sharing - because it is generally good business - but this is a decision of the corporation and not the government.

"If we're fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports, the benefits cannot just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. They have to be shared by American workers, who need to know that opening markets will lift their standard of living as well as your bottom line," President Obama told the Chamber of Commerce on Monday morning."

01/30/2011

China is not our friend. Nor are they a competitor - a competitor means you agree to abide by the same set of rules. China is at best an adversary - and in reality our enemy.

"China's rapid growth is often painted as a threat to American interests. But President Obama said today that the country's economic progress benefits the United States and opens the door to greater international stability and humanitarian progress."

‎"President Hu Jintao is a Tiger Leader. That's kind of like a Tiger Mother, only less nurturing and more demanding. President Obama is a Dove Leader. He speaks endlessly and carries no stick. And he likes to do a lot of bowing and scraping. Kind of like the way Hu Jintao likes to do a lot of not smiling."

"WASHINGTON -- Who did you think would come out on top if you put a tiger and a dove in the same room together to work out their differences?"

Obama's praise for China and his use of Sputnik as the metaphor for American achievement are glaring reminders of just how much he and his party misunderstand the real America. I'm no big fan of Trump - but he is right on this one. "China is not a friend of the US and should not have been praised during President Obama's State of the Union speech Tuesday, real estate magnate Donald Trump said."

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